


The Rise and Fall of Apollo and the God of Love

by slpblue



Series: The AU™ [1]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, David Bowie (Musician), I'M SO SORRY FOR EVERYTHING YOU'RE ABOUT TO READ, The Rolling Stones
Genre: M/M, What do I even tag this as I'm not even gonna try
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 03:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19142581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slpblue/pseuds/slpblue
Summary: Eros and Apollo crash together again.  It's just as destructive as always.





	The Rise and Fall of Apollo and the God of Love

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not even going to try to explain myself. This is a mess because it's part of a larger AU that hasn't been posted yet and will eventually make more sense. All that you get is that my roommate cried while reading this. Enjoy!
> 
> **UPDATE ON THIS WORK:** It is now the beginning of 2020. I wrote this nearly two years ago and posted it seven months ago. A _lot_ in this AU has changed since then. This work is no long by any means complete anymore, but I'm leaving it up anyway because I still think it's a stellar piece of writing. Just don't be surprised if you read the rest of The AU™ and there's stuff in it that references things between Apollo & Eros that doesn't appear here. What is here is still true and hasn't changed, there's just a lot more important stuff that has also been added.  
>  _ **tldr;** A lot has changed in two years and while this is outdated in terms of lore in the AU, it's still worth a read :)_

“David Bowie.”  He smiles, and it’s familiar and it makes something deep in Apollo’s gut ache.  He’s so pretty, always has been. “I’ve heard of you. Nice to meet you.”

“E—eh, Mick, I presume?”

His accent is so much rougher than the one Apollo has adopted over the years, to go with the bad boy image he’s pulled out of nowhere.  This is not the Eros Apollo knew. But then, he’s not the Apollo Eros knew either. It is 1965 and The Rolling Stones are already successful.  Eros was always his talented boy.

“That’ll be me.”  He offers his hand, and Apollo takes it.  Does he really not recognize him? His hands feel even softer than he remembers, even smaller.  He’s dyed his hair—Apollo had never thought to imagine him as a brunet.

Apollo leans a little closer, looks his former lover in the eyes.  “Eros,” he says softly. “It’s me.”

He watches panic and confusion and then finally recognition flit across Eros’ face before he snatches his hand back.  “What are you doing here?” he hisses, trying to remain calm. There are too many people here to cause a scene.

“I wanted to see you,” Apollo begins, but Eros has already taken a step back and away, back to his band and his friends and away from the man he warred with on the battlefield and in the bed.

“Stay away from me, Apollo.”  He turns, tense, and is gone in the crowd.  Apollo doesn’t try to follow. His heart is choking him.

* * *

They’re tense at a little table, Apollo feeling too tall and too long and too conspicuous.

“What happened to your eyes?”

Apollo jerks his head up.  “What?”

Eros is looking at him expectantly.  “I agreed to come out on a date with you, tell me about your eyes.  What happened?”

Apollo manages a smile.  “Are you concerned about me?”

“No, just tell me what the fuck happened to your eyes, _David_.”  He sounds annoyed, but there’s the barest ghost of a smile on Eros’ lips.

“Arte—punched me.  In the face. Hard.”

Eros raises his eyebrows and tries to take a dignified sip of wine before cracking up and managing to snort it everywhere.  “Artemis did that?”

Apollo looks away and crosses his arms.  “Yes.”

“What a girl.  I like her.”

“She doesn’t like you.”

“She doesn’t like any men, piss off.  Why’d she punch you? Other than you being an intolerable bag of dicks, I mean.”

Apollo shifts and opens his mouth, but the waiter brings their food before he can answer.  He leans back to make room for his plate and Eros smiles, pretty, in thanks. The waiter pauses.  “Has anyone ever told you that you look like that guy from The Rolling—”

“More times than you would think,” Eros laughs, cutting him off.  “I get it a lot.”

The waiter smiles a bit.  “The resemblance is uncanny.”  He bobs his head a little. “Enjoy your food.”

Apollo scowls a little down at his plate and doesn’t miss Eros’ little smirk.  “Looks like I’m the more popular one this time.”

“For now,” Apollo snarks, then immediately deflates.  “I’m—I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight like—like we used to.”

Eros pauses with his fork in his food, then slowly puts down the utensil.  “Why did Artemis punch you, Pol.”

Apollo feels something tight untangle in his chest at the nickname.  “She was mad at me. For a lot of things. For—for fucking up. And she was pissed, so when I finally made it out of the Labyrinth—”

Eros sucks in a breath.  “You went in too?”

“I didn’t want to,” Apollo murmurs.  The candle in the middle of the table dims suddenly, his wine glass frosty when he picks it up and takes a careful sip.  “Father made me.”

Eros’ hand is tight on his fork.  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know—”

“I didn’t expect you to,” Apollo says softly.  So many memories and crowding his mind, and he just pushes them all back down, where he’s shoved them for thousands of years.  He clears his throat. “How have you been the last hundred years or so?”

At the end of their date, Apollo ducks down a little but is stopped when Eros puts his finger to his lips.  “I’m not the kind of girl to kiss on the first date,” he murmurs, looking up at Apollo through his eyelashes.

“I—oh—Ros—”

“Which means,” Eros interrupts, “you’ll have to ask me out a second time.  I want flowers again,” he adds, smiling.

Apollo smiles back a little.  “Okay.”

Eros slips his little hand into his as Apollo walks him home.

* * *

For their second date, Apollo brings him flowers again, just like Eros wanted.  He feels sick with nerves, but the night is nice. They don’t just have dinner; after, they walk the city, talking soft and laughing a little.  It’s nearly two before Eros’ steps slow. “I should go.”

Apollo presses his lips together.  “Goodnight, Eros.”

He’s surprised when Eros lingers before disappearing back to his apartment.  “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight?”

Apollo blinks a little.  “But you said—”

“That was the first date, dumbass.  Maybe I’m the kind of girl who likes kisses the second time around.”  Eros looks so soft and small and his hair curls into his eyes, too long for respectable television—not that that has stopped him.

Apollo’s long hand curls over Eros’ cheek, over the scar that he doesn’t try to hide with his hair anymore.   _I want to love you forever_ , he thinks.  “You’re so beautiful,” he says.

Eros’ eyes cut away and he smiles, all dimples.  “Shut up and kiss me.”

Apollo bends down, curls around him, feels the way Eros leans up on his toes.  Seventeen inches is a long way to go but it’s a distance they’re used to, one their bodies know how to fill.

Eros’ lips are softer than he remembers—and colder.  Eros sucks in a breath but keeps kissing him. After a moment he slides a hand up to press his thumb to Apollo’s mouth.  “You’re scalding.”

“Like the sun.”

“Shut the _fuck_ up, Pol.”

Apollo smiles even as he aches.

* * *

“We should move in together,” Eros whispers some time later.  It’s a new year. They’ve fallen right back into each other.

Apollo’s hand is on his bare hip, pulling him closer again, tucking him under his chin.  “Should we, now.”

“I don’t want to be away from you more than I have to.”  Eros presses his hand to Apollo’s chest. “I love you.” It’s silent for a moment, the only sound Apollo’s caught breath.  “I never really stopped.”

Apollo moves his hand to the small of Eros’ back, presses him flush to his torso.  The smaller god tangles their legs together.

“Say something, Pol.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Let’s get a place.”

Eros kisses the faint stubble at Apollo’s jaw.  “I love you.”

“Ros—”

“It’s okay.  You don’t have to say it.  Just...don’t wait so long this time, please.”

Apollo swallows.  He’s glad, with Eros tucked into his chest, that he can’t meet his eyes, that he can’t see the fear he knows is apparent in his mismatched pupils.  “I can’t make those kinds of promises, Ros.”

Eros sighs soft, like lace.  “I know. I was just hoping.”

* * *

Apollo lays in bed at their New York apartment, smoking anxiously.  He doesn’t like fighting. Especially not over Brian. Him dying still weighs so heavy on the both of them, even a whole year later.

Apollo can see Eros standing at the balcony, his wings hanging loosely from his back.  The tips almost reach his feet; everything about him is small and delicate. He holds a wine glass in his slender fingers.  The lights of the city below and above and around paint his bare skin blue and purple and red.

Apollo takes a terrified breath and rises from bed, comes up behind Eros and ducks his head down to his shoulder, presses his forehead to his skin.  His hands settle on his hips, long fingers meeting over his navel, thumbs pressed together. Small and delicate. He wants to tell him he loves him, but Apollo breaks the things he loves.  So he doesn’t. “Come back to bed, Mike,” he whispers instead. “I miss you. I—need you."

Eros turns his head, wings shifting.  “Sometimes I wish you could lie to me.”

Apollo doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, waiting.

“Mostly though, I’m glad you can’t.”  Eros turns, sets down the glass and presses his hands to Apollo’s chest.  “It means I know that when you tell me something like ‘I need you’ that you mean it.”  Eros sinks into his arms, laying his head below his sternum. Small and delicate.

Apollo swallows.  Small and delicate.   _Don’t break him_.

Eros reaches his arms up, and Apollo bends down so he can wrap them around his neck.  One of Eros’ legs comes up and Apollo lifts him the rest of the way as he stands back up.  Eros presses his mouth to Apollo’s neck and wraps his legs around his waist. “Take me back to bed, _apollon emos_.”

Apollo beds him.

* * *

“I’m hungry,” Eros whines, putting his feet up on the table.  “David, feed me.”

Apollo rolls his eyes, but his heart is beating so fast it feels like he’s falling.  Somehow, his hands don’t shake as he reaches for the apple on top of the pile, tosses it to his lover.  “Catch.”

Eros snatches the apple out of the air, raising an eyebrow.  “Three thousand years late, aren’t you? Had this been Greece I would have thought you were trying to propose.”

“Open it,” Apollo says softly.  “Watch your teeth.”

Eros gives him a strange look and bites into the fruit, eyes widening when he pulls the apple away from his mouth.  “Pol—” He digs the ring out of the flesh of the fruit. It’s small and delicate, little diamonds and rubies adorning the band to form an apple.

“This isn’t Greece,” Apollo says softly.  “But we are Greeks.” He sinks into the chair next to Eros.  “Let’s get married.”

Eros smiles, so pretty  Apollo can feel his heart breaking.  “Only if we get to elope.”

“Anything you want.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

“I want to go to Greece, then.  For a while. To do it.”

Apollo curls his hands over Eros’ and takes the ring from him, sucking on the metal to clean it of the fruit’s juices.  Eros makes a face but holds out his hand and lets Apollo slip it on. “Is this a yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Home.”

“Wait—when?”

“Now.  Who needs to wait between getting engaged and finalizing a marriage?”

Eros stands, kisses Apollo.  “I love you.”

Apollo smiles, but it’s not sad.  “I know, my light.”

* * *

Apollo rubs at his wrists, the inconspicuous band on his finger glinting.  “I expected it to hurt more.” Bandages cover the new tattoos on his wrists, his ankles.  Four hearts.

Eros grins around the lollipop that he’s procured from somewhere and that Apollo is convinced he sucks on just to tease him.  “You worry too much.”

“Can’t dispute that.”  Apollo wants to hold his hand so badly, wants to pick him up and spin him around and kiss him and tells him he’s beautiful and that he loves him.  He can’t do any of that. “Should we go to Olympus?”

“We’re here, aren’t we?” Eros shrugs, pushing up his sunglasses.  The bandage on his neck covering his own tattoo is in full view with the low-necked shirt he’s wearing.  Four hearts, a circle. “Might as well.” He pauses. “Keep Arte away from me. Only one of us in this relationship needs fucked-up eyes.”

Apollo rolls his eyes, fondess enveloping his heart.  “Relax, I’ll protect you.”

Eros slips his hand into his anyways, even though they’re both getting more famous and there are so many people around. “I know you will.  You always will.”

* * *

They’re Greek gods, but they’re also rock gods.  They’re _Mick Jagger_ and _David Bowie_.  Of course there are drugs.  Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll—isn’t that how it goes?  They are all three, losing bits of themselves to needles and lines of cocaine.  They don’t have to worry about the mortality that the humans do, but the altered minds and the dependency they develop makes being sober around each other hard.

Eros is restless and twitchy unless he’s shooting up or high.  The sex is good, the heroin is better.

Their relationship is rocky.

The highlights are when Apollo agrees to film _The Man Who Fell To Earth_ , and after every sex scene Eros takes him home at night and blows him and his mind.

They’re both coming down from a high—sex this time, not drugs—and Apollo in on Eros for once, fingers tapping a tracing along the soft skin on his hip.

“My sex is better,” Eros says suddenly, tilting Apollo’s chin up to look at him.

Apollo blinks slowly, smiling at the pout on his husband’s lips.  “Well, yes. The things I’m filming don’t count, my light. It doesn’t even really turn me—”

“My sex is _better_ ,” Eros repeats, a little louder.  Sometimes Apollo forgets he’s the jealous type.

Apollo shifts, thumb pressing into Eros’ hip a little harder.  “Do you know how I make it convincing?” he whispers into Eros’ ear.  “I pretend it’s you that I’m kissing, that I’m running my hands over.”  Eros shivers, the hand he has on Apollo’s shoulder digging in. “Do you know why I call you my light?”

“Why?” Eros asks, just as soft.

Apollo’s breath is hot on his ear.  “You’re the only thing that lights me up—that turns me on.”

Eros’ lips part and he tilts his head back.  “Tell me again,” he commands as Apollo fits his lips to his throat.  “Say it’s just me, just us.”

“Let me show you instead,” Apollo whispers.  “Actions speak so much louder than words.”

* * *

The lights are so bright and hot.  Even the sun is sweating under them, under the pressure of the audience and the questions.  “You and Mick Jagger are pretty close aren’t you?” the interviewer asks. Apollo pulls his thoughts together, wondered why he always thinks cocaine is a good idea before interviews.

“Yes,” he murmurs.  “He’s probably watching now.”

“Good friends, you two.”

“More than that, I should think,” Apollo says without thinking, and then pales.  This is national television. This is live. This is 1980. He shouldn’t say things like that.  Like the thing he just said.

The interviewer looks shocked.  Rumors and paparazzi have followed David Bowie and Mick Jagger for years, but reading it on the tabloids is something completely different from Bowie himself admitting that he’s been sleeping with the famous rocker.  “What do you—could you expand on—”

“I’d rather not,” Apollo swallows.

“But—so are you confirming—”

“I think we were talking about the tour.”

When Apollo gets home Eros is drunk and high and angry and refuses to talk to him after the first bottle is thrown.

“Ros—Ros I’m sorry I didn’t mean—”

“But you _did_ ,” Eros spits, breaking his silence.  “It doesn’t matter what you meant to do, _David_.”

Apollo flinches.  David used to be such an endearing term but Eros has warped it into something he only ever uses when he’s especially angry with him.

“Eros—”

“Shut up!   _Shut up!_  You don’t fucking—you just outed us to national television you absolute _dumbass_.”

“I’m sorry,” Apollo whispers.

Eros clenches his fists curling in on his tense arms and then flinging them out.  “Don’t you realize that it doesn’t _matter?_  It doesn’t matter how sorry you are, David, they’re not going to leave us alone now and I _hate_ them—I _hate_ the paps.”

Apollo wants to reach for him, wants to hold him.  “I want to make it better.”

“Well it’s too late,” Eros snarls.  “It’s too late.”

* * *

Apollo goes out and visits the Stones while they tour—without the rest of the Stones knowing.  He leans against the door in the bathroom in a hotel and smiles at Eros, who’s going on about something or other.  At some point he holds out hair dye to him. “Help me, Pol.”

They spend an hour and a half with Apollo rubbing hair dye into Eros’ roots, like they have so many times before.  Eros kisses him, breathing in Apollo’s smoke, while they wait for the dye to set. Eros makes him wash it out in the shower, makes him get in with him.

He lays out on the bed, arms and wings and legs spread, and beckons him closer.  Apollo gets as close as he possibly can—then shoves himself a little closer.

He bites a ring of bruises in the shape of a heart into Eros’ chest, just above the organ in his chest.

* * *

They snort together, shoot up together.  It’s destructive and Apollo hates it.

“I’m going to get clean,” he announces one day, watching smoke curl from Eros’ cigarette.  They’re on the balcony, and Eros is shirtless in the sun. He looks tired. “No more drugs.”

Eros snorts.  “Sure.”

“I mean it, Ros.  I don’t like it anymore.  I don’t like who it’s made us.”  He stabs out his own cigarette and reaches for Eros’ hand.  He pulls it away and leaves Apollo lonely and alone on the table.  “Do it with me.”

Eros stands, tries to hide the shaking of his hands by crossing his arms.  “There’s no point, Pollo. It does’t matter.”

“Eros—”

“No.  I’m fine.  Do whatever you want, I don’t care.”

Apollo makes good on his plan to get clean and sober, somehow.  Eros never even tries.

* * *

It’s late, and dark, and 1984.  Apollo wrote a song about this year once.  About Eros. And it’s here and it hurts even more than it did to write it.

Eros is almost asleep.  Apollo has so many words and so many emotions clogging up his throat, all begging to get out.  He thinks it may be too late—and not just the hour. He strokes a gentle hand over Eros’ hair. “I love you,” he whispers, so soft he can barely hear it himself, before his nerve leaves him.

Eros shifts slightly, curling a little closer.  They still gravitate together at night. “I love you too,” he mumbles, then goes infinitely still.  His eyes open, searching for Apollo’s in the dim. “Pol—”

“Ros,” Apollo whispers.

“You—” he doesn’t finish the sentence, just starts crying.  “Oh my gods, _Pol_.”

Apollo sits up, worried.  “I’m sorry—”

“No,” Eros gasps, sitting up as well.  He puts a hand on either side of Apollo’s face.  “Don’t be sorry. Never be sorry for loving someone.”  His voice drops. “Never. Especially not me.”

“I’m sorry I never told you,” Apollo whispers, his hands going to Eros’ waist.  This is the closest they’ve been in weeks, and Apollo has been aching for this contact.  “I’m so sorry. I just—I couldn’t.”

“It’s okay,” Eros shushes, kissing him.  “It’s okay. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Apollo says, and his breath and body are shaking with emotion and tears.  “I love you.”

“You once told me actions speak louder than words,” Eros breathes, climbing into Apollo’s lap.  His wings curl up and around them. “Your words are so loud, Pollo. The loudest things I’ve ever heard.”  He kisses him again, hungry.

“I love you,” Apollo feeds into his mouth.  “I love you.”

“Tell me again,” Eros demands, fingernails sharp on his shoulders, tugging.  “Don’t stop.”

Apollo follows him down into the mattress.  “I love you. So much. More than anything. More than myself.”

“More than anything,” Eros breathes, sucking in a breath when Apollo nips at his chest, his stomach.

“Anything.”

“More than anyone?” Eros prompts, fingers in Apollo’s hair, tugging, tugging.

Apollo can’t breathe.  “Ros—”

The disappointment tastes like blood.  “It’s fine. Ghosts haunt me too.” He closes his eyes.  “I will live with this.” He pulls up Apollo’s hand to kiss his wrist.  “I will live with you.”

“You’re too good to me,” Apollo says, choking on memory.

“I am,” Eros agrees, pulling Apollo onto him again.  “But that hasn’t stopped me yet.”

* * *

“Our managers want us to— _I_ want us to do a song together.  It’s for charity. All the proceeds go to help ending world hunger.  Please, Mike.” They don’t call each other by their names anymore. Not their real names, at least.  It is 1985.

Eros looks up, bleary-eyed and sad.  Apollo’s chest aches for him. _Talk to me,_ he wants to say.   _I’m worried about you_.  “It’ll be fun.  We can dance together.”

Eros just shrugs.  “Sure.” He smiles a little, but it’s not with any real joy.

All things being said, it’s the happiest twelve hours they’ve had in a long time.  They record “Dancing In the Street” in a mere four hours, the immediately shoot the video after.  It’s the most fun they’ve had in ages. At one point Eros pulls him close by the collar of his shirt, lip syncing along to his own voice, and stares him right in the eye.  He ruins the take when he yanks him too close, their noses and cheeks colliding. They’re careful not to kiss, to even come close to it. They shoot again, this time Eros merely sliding his fingers along the front of Apollo’s shirt.  Apollo aches for their easy familiarity, but then they’re done shooting and Eros says he’s tired and they never come so close to kissing again.

* * *

“I’m doing another movie,” Apollo tells Eros.  “It’s a Jim Henson one. Ah, Lucasfilms.” _Remember when Star Wars came out?_ he wants to ask, _How we saw it three times in theatres?  Together?_  “You can—you’d be welcome on the set.”

Eros shakes his head.  He looks smaller every day, like he’s wasting away.  “No.”

_Please talk to me_.  “I love you.”  Even he can hear how the words sound like manipulation.  He didn’t—he didn’t mean it like that.

“Okay.”

They tell him he can write whatever he wants for his songs.  He’s captured a baby, apparently, stolen him away for his own.  He wants to be sick. Of course he’d do a movie called Labyrinth.  Of course. Old dreams come back to him, ones he’d thought he’d repressed, ones where Icarus falls and falls and falls.  Eros asks him about it when he wakes up, why he’d been crying. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Apollo whispers.

Eros’ whole body goes tense.  “Fine. I didn’t want to hear it anyway.”

Later, Apollo puts his mind to work and writes.

_I saw my baby crying hard as babe could cry.  What could I do? My baby’s love had gone and left my baby blue…_

No one can figure out why it’s so cold while they film the scene.

* * *

Eros has never looked so calm, or so tired, as when he sits Apollo down at their kitchen table and tells him his plan to kill himself.

“But—Mick—”

“No, listen.  It’s been twenty years, David.  I still look twenty-two—I _am_ still twenty-two.  Are so are you, or whatever age you told people you were—”

“Technically I said I was eighteen in 65, which would make me thirty-nine now—Jesus I’m old.”

“Okay, whatever, shut up.  We need to die.”

“But how—”

“How _else_ , David.  We’re going to overdose.”

“I’ve been clean for years,” Apollo whispers, but his skin feels itchy just thinking about it.

Eros rolls his eyes.  “It’s called relapse.”

As much as Apollo hates to admit it, Eros has a point.  They can’t go on living like this forever, and death by overdose isn’t exactly an unbelievable way to go.  “When were you thinking?”

“Soon.”  Eros sounds so, so bitter, and his smile mirrors the spite in his words.  “Christmas.”

Apollo takes a breath.  Two weeks. “Okay.”

* * *

It’s all going wrong.

Apollo is heady and woozy with too much heroin, but Eros isn’t moving at all.  “Mike,” he croaks, fighting to keep his eyes open. “Eros.” He lays a hand on him.  He’s so much colder than usual. “ _Eros_.”  He doesn’t move, doesn’t stir, doesn’t breathe.

Apollo clumsily falls over him trying to read his pulse.  He should—he needs—there should be—

There isn’t.

“Eros!” Apollo gasps, and tries to rise to his feet.  An ambulance. He needs an ambulance. He doesn’t understand, but he can tell that Eros is dead.  Dead. Mortal. Mortally dead.

Apollo crashes back to the floor, banging his chin.  He can taste blood. “Fuck,” he slurs, “ _fuck_.”  His heart is beating so fast, so fast.  The drugs—he needs to get to the phone.

He doesn’t know how he does it, but somehow he’s dialing Keith’s number.   _Keith,_ of all people.  But it’s the only number he can remember, doesn’t even remember how to call for an ambulance.  They were going to wait for someone to find them. This can’t wait.

“ _Hello?_ ”

“Keith,” Apollo gasps, clutching the phone and sliding to the floor until the wire is taut.  “Please, it’s me—it’s David.”

“ _D—why are you calling me?  It’s Christmas_.”

“I know,” Apollo chokes.  “I’m so sorry. I’m s’sorry.”

“ _What—what’s wrong.  Where’s Mick?_ ”  They’ve never told Eros’ band, but it was hard not to figure it out.  They were never exactly subtle, and Apollo _was_ the dumbass who told the whole world that they were together.

“The bathroom,” Apollo whimpers.  “Please, I’m so sorry, I didn’t—we didn’t—it wasn’t supposed to end like this you hafta call a—call— _help_.”

“ _David what’s happening?  What happened?_ ”

“I hafta go—go back to—him.”

He leaves the phone hanging, but he can hear Keith’s panicked, “ _Where’s Mick_ — _David?!_ ” as he drags his heavy body back to the bathroom and curls around Eros’ form, wrapping his long limbs around

“I’m so sorry,” Apollo whispers.  “I never wanted this.” Everything is so heavy.  His heart has finally calmed down. It’s not racing at a thousand miles an hour, but chugging sluggishly along at one.  “I...I love...you,” he breathes. _Don’t go_ , he thinks.  He can’t keep his eyes open.  He presses his lips to Eros’ forehead, and leaves them there until he falls asleep.

* * *

Zeus had yanked Eros out of the underworld, angry.  Amazing how quickly things go to shit when love is in chaos.  Eros and Apollo had fallen the rest of the way apart soon after as well.

Now, Apollo wanders Olympus alone, trying to kick his addiction after relapse—and failing.  He hasn’t seen Eros in several years, and he misses him. Misses him with every body he lures into bed, every pretty thing he kisses.  None of them make him forget like he wants them to. He just wants Eros back, as much as he tries to deny it.

Apollo walks long empty roads that lead to nowhere and smokes cigarettes down to the filter, burning his fingers and letting them sting for a few minutes before he heals himself.  He’ll get Eros back. He will. He smiles bitterly. He’d say _if it killed him_ , except for one little thing.

It already has.


End file.
